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Preserving the Digital LawExpert Speaks at Library Event

By MARIE-LOUISE BERNAL

In a continuing effort to explore solutions to the issue of long-term
preservation of digital legal sources, Law Librarian Rubens Medina
called a second meeting of managers from federal agencies and other
institutions on March 25.

Law Librarian Rubens Medina confers with Rebecca Graham
of the Council on Library and Information Resources and Steve
Levenson from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. - Skip
Swinson

"I am pleased that so many of you have responded to this invitation
to meet Professor Margaret Hedstrom of the University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor, an expert in the field, in order to learn more about the
current state of archiving of digital information," the Law Librarian
said in his welcoming remarks. "My hope is, with your help, to
broaden the interest and support within the federal sector for the
development of preservation standards for electronic records."

The managers met with Law Library staff and officials from other parts
of the Library of Congress, such as the Preservation and Reformatting
Office, the Congressional Research Service and the Copyright Office.
Stakeholders from other agencies and organizations in this group include
Francis Buckley, superintendent of documents, Government Printing Office;
Shelley Dowling, librarian of the court, U.S. Supreme Court; Rebecca
Graham, Council on Library and Information Resources; Steve Levenson
from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts; Robert Willard,
National Council of Library and Information Science; and Marc Wolfe
of the National Archives and Records Administration.

The meeting focused on a recently released report by the Research
Libraries Group, "Digital Preservation Needs and Requirements
in RLG Institutions," written by Margaret Hedstrom, in cooperation
with Sheon Montgomery. Ms. Hedstrom was the featured speaker and shared
her experiences in national and international attempts to solve digital
preservation needs.

"Digital preservation policies and practices are not well developed
in RLG member institutions," Ms. Hedstrom admitted. "Based
on our study, two-thirds of the institutions lack written policies
for digital preservation. One common reason that institutions appear
not to develop digital preservation policies is that they have not
yet assumed responsibility for preserving materials in digital form."

Ms. Hedstrom has been conducting and supervising research projects
on the management and preservation of electronic records for nearly
20 years. During the last decade she has called two major conferences
that established national priorities for research and development in
this field. The Research Libraries Group report describes the current
status of digital preservation in 30 research libraries and 24 archives,
museums and special collections.

The report indicated that, by the year 2001, 98 percent expected to
be preserving both acquired, or "born-digital," items as
well as materials they have converted to digital form. Fewer than half
of the institutions with digital holdings refresh them by copying to
new media or migrating these materials to current formats. The need
for digital preservation expertise is high: asked to rate staff as
expert, intermediate or novice, only eight of the 54 institutions considered
their staff at the expert level. The report revealed further that the
participating member libraries looked to RLG to make available concrete
standards, guidelines and training.

Ms. Hedstrom described the organization of the report and explained
its scope and definitions: "It will be necessary to totally change
our thinking. We must no longer see digital information as a continuation
of the paper. We must think anew. "

In relating current strategies and best practices, complex issues
were touched upon, such as appropriate standards for long-term preservation
and the incentives for creators and producers to adopt such standards
and who is responsible for preserving which materials.

Mr. Medina concluded the meeting by expressing his commitment to heightening
the awareness of the software industry to the need to develop archival
standards. He also promised to continue coordinating efforts to bring
federal stakeholders and interested law librarians together in order
to keep them current on the archiving of digital information in general
and the long-term preservation of legal records in particular.